Great to have some real expertise around!  Although it may involve some design effort, the fact that (in theory at least) wind-turbines can be detuned/retuned to cope with load balancing issues means you can have a much higher degree of wind penetration - baring a giant high covering all of Northern Europe and generating almost no wind - and you need far less gas load balancing units.  When combined with smartgrids, a larger grid coverage,  more storage, and other renewable sources you could even reduce baseload coal/nuclear capacity as a proportion of the whole.

Index of Frank's Diaries